Blockchain Films
The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin
Daniel Mross's first-person documentary following early Bitcoin adopters from 2011 to 2014.
Directed by Nicholas Mross and centered on his brother Daniel — a programmer who started mining Bitcoin in 2011 — this is one of the earliest serious documentaries about the network. It was shot over several years and released right after the Mt. Gox implosion, which gives it an accidentally well-timed arc: idealism, gold rush, collapse, uncertain future.
Who it's for
Viewers who want a personal, ground-level view of what it actually felt like to be early to Bitcoin, when it was still something you mined on a laptop and explained to skeptical relatives at Thanksgiving. It's also a useful watch for newer entrants who want to understand why some longtime holders are the way they are.
What it does well
The home-video quality of much of the footage is, paradoxically, the film's strongest asset. You see Daniel Mross's GPU rigs in a basement, Charlie Shrem running BitInstant out of a small office, conferences with a few dozen attendees, and a young, awkward community that genuinely believed it was building something important. The Mt. Gox material — including footage from Tokyo as the exchange collapsed — is some of the best you'll find anywhere.
There's also a useful subplot about the Bitcoin Foundation and the early attempts to give the project a public face, including with regulators. Watching those scenes with hindsight is instructive.
Where it falls short
The film doesn't really know what it is. It's part family story, part business profile, part technology primer, and the technical explanations are the weakest part — viewers without prior knowledge will probably come away still fuzzy on what a blockchain actually is. It also leans uncritically into the libertarian framing that dominated the 2011-2014 community, and barely engages with criticism.
And, again, it's a decade old. Everything from Ethereum onwards is absent, the price chart it ends on looks quaint, and most of the people on screen have since had very different second acts (some triumphant, some indicted). Watch it as a primary-source artifact, not as a current explainer.